While reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, I noticed some common themes between the stories. Specifically, the representation of the Indian community in regards to outsiders was very similar in "A Real Durwan" and "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar."
In "A Real Durwan," Boori Ma is a frail old woman that serves as a sort of doorkeeper for the apartment building that seems to have taken her under its wing. She talks of tales from her old life, both good and bad. Her voice is described as being "brittle with sorrows, as tart as curds, and shrill enough to grate meat from a coconut" (70). From talking about her losses during Partition to reminding the public of her daughter's extravagant wedding, Boori Ma always seems to be rambling on about something or another. Initially, this struck me as kind of annoying and reminded me of those old relatives everyone keeps around but doesn't care to take seriously. However, I soon noticed that I was being presented the situation largely through the eyes of an outsider. Since the narrator is pretty detached, I began noticing the way the people of the apartment building were treating her. They were very dismissive of her legitimacy, both as a storyteller and as a durwan. The title, "A Real Durwan," stems from the fact that none of them consider her to be a proper doorkeeper. In fact, she seems to be living amongst them much like a stray cat would.
Similarly, "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" concerns a younger woman, Bibi Haldar, who is deemed unmarriable and unlovable due to her sporadic seizures, the cause of which is unknown. She is also described as being kinda ugly and unkempt. This story differs from "A Real Durwan" since, for the first time in the book, this story is narrated from the first person plural, "we." "In the mornings Bibi arrived in the storage room wearing cracked plastic slippers and a housecoat whose hem stopped some inches below the knee ... She bemoaned her fate and challenged her stars as we hung our laundry or scrubbed scales from our fish. She was not pretty" (160). Already we can see that the community is being a little harsh towards Bibi; treating her suffering as volatile and her appearance as subpar. When it turns out the cure for her disease is "the most outrageous of them all," which is to find a husband, the community actually seems to help her get cleaned up and marriage-ready. However, I had to be careful to consider whether this was the Indian community genuinely helping her, or if they were treating her as just another pet or project.
In these two stories, both Boori Ma and Bibi Haldar seem to be overlooked as to having any legitimacy. This made me question what Jhumpa Lahiri's intentions were when writing this book. Instead of presenting India as the ideal homeland and America as a cold new world, Lahiri actually hints at the cons of Indian community. Especially when it came to the treatment of Boori Ma and Bibi Haldar, I noticed that the people weren't as accepting of outsiders as I may have thought.
